


Alternate States of Highness

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, season one-to-three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 15:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1515302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three episode tie-ins involving Daryl, from Rick pov, with Shane and Merle in the background</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternate States of Highness

_You and Daryl, that’s your big plan?_  

                     - Lori Grimes – Tell it to the Frogs, season one.

 

 

“Your brother was high,” Rick says. It’s not much as far as explanations go, informative as saying Merle _doesn’t work and play well with others_ , and anyone raised with the man must know it.  Rick fails to elaborate on the sentence but he feels he owes more than a catch-phrase to Daryl, something other than what amounts to, as _I didn’t like him._   There’s more to it than that of course because Merle’s abandonment was unintentional, whether he worked or played well with others or not.  Rick wipes the sweat from his forehead then resettles the brim of his hat.  The early morning heat is already oppressive, insects buzzing in a dark swarm.  The campground is a war-zone, a semi-ring of vehicles that lay between the tents and the wilderness.  “I think you understand how dangerous that is, given the circumstances we’re now in.  The way it might lead to…difficulties ahead.”  Like leaving a man handcuffed to the roof.

Squatting beside the triumph, Daryl doesn’t respond overtly. There’s a beat-up blue Ford beside the motorcycle, a rumpled bedroll laid out on the tray; Rick stares at the stylized lighting strikes of Hitler’s SS, emblazoned on the side of the bike, with distaste.  He doesn’t describe his first meeting with Merle in detail, the white supremacy crap he sprouted on the rooftop in Atlanta, or how he was taking pot-shots at walkers, wasting ammunition, drawing more attention to their current location than Rick had trying to escape the tank.  He doesn’t say Merle decked him with a single punch either, left him winded and disorientated on the roof, or how Rick cold-cocked Merle from behind because no way in hell was he going to confront that man one-on-one in a fight. Rick’s trying to hold onto his sense of grace but his mother didn’t raise him to be a wilful idiot and he already recognised the fever burning in Merle’s eyes, seen the high-strung movement, felt the telltale needle scars running down Merle’s forearm when Rick handcuffed him to the pipe, and that was before he threw the plastic baggie over the side of the building.  High. Strung out like a kite - and whatever patience god granted Rick evaporated like so much smoke.   It took Rick less than a minute to write Merle Dixon off and it’s an impression that’s refusing to budge, reinforced with every backhanded complaint vocalised by the group.

The brother’s more elusive to figure out, harder to pin-point.

There are definite similarities between the siblings but the mirror-glass glitter in Merle’s eyes isn’t one of them. Daryl doesn’t act like a junkie – he acts like a man whose only family was left behind to be eaten – and Rick can sympathise with that.  There’s guilt gnawing on Rick’s bones for what was done and what he told Lori rings true, staked out on a rooftop is no way for a man to die, but the thought of additional firepower motivates Rick more than the thought of Merle Dixon, it out-weights Shane’s concern and the promise Rick made to never to let his family out of sight again.  Rick’s been mulling over what action to take all morning, the balances tipping every time he catches sight of Lori and Carl, but oddly enough, Daryl becomes the deciding factor.   Rick wasn’t sure what to expect – felt oddly slighted when the younger Dixon brushed by without a single acknowledgment, when every other member of the camp had been throwing questions or nodding shyly in greeting at Rick all morning. Daryl sidles by as if Rick doesn’t exist, as if he doesn’t register, intent on finding his brother, calling out Merle’s name with assurity.

There are things Rick regrets about the dust-up, the way every member of the camp came out to watch for one, circling Daryl in a small ring like spectators to a grisly car-crash – the uneasy way Daryl moved when he was realised he was being shut-in – the sense of _relief_ Rick felt when the man came at him with a knife, low to the ground and blind furious.  Rick knows how to handle himself in a fight, and with Shane tag-teaming - the two of them working the way they’d been drilled - they brought that redneck down in no time.   And maybe that’s where things swung a little off-kilter, because Daryl was a mini-Merle up until that point – and every violent reaction he had cemented how calm Rick was in comparison.  Rick’s not much for politics but he knows the ins and outs – he knows violence is easier to respond to than a verbal put-down – and he knows Daryl lost whatever sympathy he might have curried the moment he bared his blade.  The group circle around Daryl tightly, judging with narrowed eyes, smirking at the quick exchanges between Shane and his ‘prisoner’.  Knowing he’s being ‘laughed’ at has to smart, and their keen eagerness to witness Daryl’s grief makes Rick want to snarl, to tell them to clear out, an odd awareness that brings Rick to his knees in front of Daryl, eye to eye, as intimate as he can make it with the entire camp gathered.

Rick had seen the bike with the SS insignia, he’d seen the way Merle acted around T-Dog, and when the man in question ‘fessed up, admitted to dropping the key to Merle’s handcuffs, Rick had winced internally, braced himself for the inevitable rant; for every redneck, racial slur and insult to come tumbling out of Daryl’s mouth, all that hatred, anger, and poison finally focused on a conventional target.  He knew what Merle would have said.  Rick spent half a minute waiting for Daryl to react exactly the same way.

“You couldn’t pick it up?”  

He’s still sprawled in the dirt, braced on both palms. Daryl ignores the people staring on the outskirts the same way he had ignored Rick in the clearing, as if their assessment meant nothing.  He doesn’t seem embarrassed to have lost the fight physically, he doesn’t exhibit the same resentment Merle did, as if he’d stab Rick in the spine the moment he turned his back. 

Rick casts him a quick glance, surprised that the cheap shots aren’t part of Daryl’s repertoire; he opts for the details, the explanation, now the violence is over. “I dropped it down the drain,” T-Dog elaborates.

It’s a difference in temperament - and one that Rick picks up on instantly - on the surface Merle and his younger brother could be one and the same, cut from the same mould, their tempers furious as a lightning strike, but the discrepancies between them are evident even in that first meeting.

“Just tell me where he is,” Daryl spits. The anger/grief contorts his voice, makes it break mid-sentence, he scrubs the dust from his eyes furiously. “So I can go get him.” Easily as that, Rick’s decision is cemented – he won’t be alone when he returns to Atlanta for those weapons, he’ll have back-up, even if Daryl is a little harder to predict than expected.

Lori sees it too. 

Later, her voice turns scolding as she says _.  You and Daryl, that’s your big plan?_

It’s one I can work with, Rick thinks, distractedly.

They sweep through the department store like thieves, communication that’s silent and oddly harmonious.  Daryl moves like a shadow, fluid, perfectly in sync, as if he’s been doing this alongside Rick for as long as Shane had, drilled under instruction again and again until it was perfect.  Rick sends Daryl ahead with a crooked finger, highlighting the walker ambling by the sweater section, Glenn and T-Dog remain in the periphery of his vision and Daryl moves out of step with a simple nod of acknowledgement, angles to the left for a clearer shot. The crossbow is the most practical weapon for the hit – but it’s a two-fold decision on Rick’s behalf, he already knows Glenn and T-Dog have his back, he wants to see how Daryl will react to a command, if he’d buck and bite the same way Merle would.

I can work with this, Rick thinks more firmly, watching as the Walker drops with a cross bolt through the eye, and whatever differences they have can be smoothed out along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Are those ears he’s wearing?_

                         -  Glenn Rhee – Chupacabra, season two.

 

 

 

 

“I want my ears back,” Daryl says, bluntly.

As conversation-opener’s go, Rick muses faintly, it’s a doozy. 

Shane does a double-take, mouth fighting against a smirk and losing badly.  “You mean the geek necklace Rick tore off your person, not two days ago?”

“What of it?  It’s _mine_.”

“Give us a minute?” Rick interjects, angling between them.  Daryl shifts restlessly, he’s packed up his tent, moved his gear out by the debris of a shearer’s hut, a collection of falling down bricks near a dead tree.  The farm ran sheep as their main livestock centuries ago, Hershel said, and the building’s the skeletal remains of a previous dynasty. Physically, Daryl’s as far from Rick’s people as he can be while still remaining on Hershel’s farm. Rick’s seen him whittling down arrows out there, carving them from wood with a painstaking patience. He’s been pissed ever since Sophia was dealt with, and then Rick corrects himself automatically because that isn’t quite right.  No. He’s been pissed since Carol refused to attend her own daughter’s funeral, wandering the fields instead, and something savage ignited under Daryl’s skin.  Not the death of the girl, but Carol’s refusal to acknowledge her, as if that small body should have stayed lost in the woods forever, not worth finding.  Rick’s observant enough to pin-point the change in demeanour, he just doesn’t have the resources, the background, to understand why.  “I have ‘em…just…hang about, okay?” 

Shane’s expression turns incredulous, his voice raises an octave.  “Seriously, man, you _kept_ the necklace?”

“Wasn’t intentional,” Rick mutters.  Daryl stays put as directed, but Shane dogs Rick’s heels as they move toward their own grouping of tents. 

He’d torn the necklace off Daryl the moment he saw Hershel running toward them through the fields. Rick had stuffed it inside his own top pocket, four decomposing ears threaded through a string, and kept it out of visual sight of the others.  The hunter was a dead weight carried between them, sweat-soaked, blood-smeared, and too damn still for Rick’s comfort.

“Trophy ears?” Shane continues, his tone waspish. “I can’t believe you left Sophia’s search in the hands of Deliverance over there.  A tracker who brings us dolls to play with while she’s under our noses the entire time, locked up in the barn?  Yeah, that’s a show of skill.  No wonder he’s hiding out in the damn fields, too ashamed to show his own face.  Some tracker,” Shane finishes, and the word sounds like a curse, the lowliest of low.

“Shane,” Rick bites out, at the end of his tether. It seems everyone is waiting to pop, infection creeping under all their skins, everyone turning on each other at the slightest provocation, trying to wound, and Rick doesn’t know how to bleed it out.

“Why’d you keep it?”

“I forgot about it.” 

And it’s the honest truth.

Too many other things went down, Daryl being shot, Hershel asking for help to clear out the walker’s in a non-violent manner, Shane flying off the handle followed by the massacre at the barn.  Sophia.  The direct aftermath when they cleared out the nearest fields and streams, chased by the sombre funeral – and then – everything went to shit. Any unity among the group demolished. 

Broken, Rick thinks. 

He listens to Shane, his barbed comments that aren’t directed solely at Rick but spread around - fired at Dale, Hershel, Daryl, Andrea, Carl and Carol – being caught in Shane’s ire is like being hit by a random spree of gunfire, aimed at everyone bar Lori, and Rick can’t help but feel the man hasn’t the faintest clue how to lead, not truly, dissent is the only thing Shane specialises in. “Unless you were out there, searching with Daryl every day, then shut it.”

Shane slows down, a hitch in his step; his shoulders ride high, head lowered like a bull, nostrils flared wide.  “Fine then, give that squinty-eyed fucker his necklace back, because that won’t disturb the rest of the camp any.” 

Shane peels away, striding toward the house. Rick watches him go, then moves past the line of tents toward the vehicles.  He’d jerked the necklace free from Daryl two nights ago stuffed it inside his pocket to keep it hidden, then carried the man into Hershel’s house, sat silent and grim as Hershel peeled the clothing off Daryl, his hands stuttering at the revealed skin, and then set to work. Rick sat through it all, waited until Daryl stirred to consciousness, then fired off the questions clipped and sharp, where Daryl had been, where he found the doll, how many walkers he encountered. He didn’t ask about the scars, he didn’t comment about the necklace burning a hole in his pocket.

Rick left a little later, he reassured Lori all was fine then strode outside, stripping off his shirt with Daryl’s bloodstains smeared across the front panel, with his trophy necklace stinking up the front pocket, and dumped it hoolus-boolus in the back seat of his vehicle.   Rick had paused long enough to grab a new shirt, then returned in-doors for the mass dinner.

The necklace has been there ever since.

Rick pulls it free with a grimace, holds it upward by the string. 

“You plan on wearing it again?”  He asks Daryl, when the man finally approaches.

It’s on the tip of his tongue to follow it up, say something authoritative and official like - _You better stay away from the camp, from Carl, if you do -_ but something holds Rick’s tongue, makes him bite down on the assumption Shane had made. Deliverance.  Redneck.  Hick. Trophy ears and a big buck knife, the way Shane can look at Daryl and _sneer_ at him on the inside, like something found on the bottom of his shoe.  Rick drops the grotesque necklace into Daryl’s outstretched palm and watches calmly as the other man shrugs.

“Planned on stringing it up beside the squirrel-line.”

The answer is matter-of-fact. Daryl watches him closely; face narrow, tight with suspicion.  Waiting for an attack, Rick realises slowly, he blinks, then blinks again, tone contemplative.  “Mask the smell of food, yeah, it’s smart.” 

In the debrief, Daryl said he had kept the arrow inside his own body for as long as he could – plugging the wound, stopping the flow of blood – until the attack occurred and circumstances demanded otherwise; _then_ he yanked it loose and used it.  With fresh blood oozing from his flank, with known walkers in the immediate area, Daryl might as well have rung the dinner bell. 

Rick feels something loosen in his chest. “Pulled the same trick in Atlanta with Glenn, guts smeared down the front of my shirt to distract from the smell of fresh meat.”

Daryl pulls a face, quick and so unexpected it almost makes Rick laugh. 

“Too messy.  Ears are okay, fingers maybe, if you had the time or energy you could haul around a walking body, but then you have to wrangle the damn thing, too much energy, and it gets in the way of huntin’.”

“Fair enough.”  Rick hesitates, thinking about the anger thrumming under Daryl’s skin, how easy it is to fall into cliché, to base understanding on the cover rather than the written words, how Shane can say _redneck trash_ when Daryl hadn’t done anything more than Rick or others had. “You don’t need to camp so far out, you’re welcome here, with us.”

“Among the kindness of this group,” Daryl snorts, derisive. He backs away, his expression closes off, turns mean.  “Yeah, I’m safer with the walkers.  Ain’t no confusing their intentions.”

Rick thinks about Carol avoiding Sophia’s funeral, he ventures softly.  “People grieve differently.”

“She’s religious,” Daryl spits.  “You heard her, same as me, praying to god almighty like JC ever gave a fuck about the likes of us, but Carol _believes_ , pouring her heart out in that church and weeping.  Some people get lost in the woods and they’re not worth looking for - ain’t no one will search for ‘em, _ever -_ because they’re nothing.  Sophia wasn’t that type of kid – but in Carol’s idea of afterlife  - her little girl's staring down at us now from the clouds, knowing in her soul her momma didn’t think she was worth a damn funeral.  That’s her last impression.  Not worth looking for.  Not found by anyone.  Lost in the woods and not even mourned at a funeral.  People grieve in different ways?” Daryl shoots back, coiled tight as a cobra.  “ _Fuck that_. Sophia deserved better.”

Daryl’s anger is always quick and furious, it smells like ozone, it turns sand into glass and scorches the earth.   It can raise the hair on Rick’s arm, make him feel aware, alive, and ready to react, but he doesn’t have a snappy rejoinder to those words, the outburst leaving him mute. Daryl takes one more step then turns on his heel.  Rick watches him go, hands curling tight.

People still have the capacity to surprise him.  In retrospect, with all the shit being flung among the group, Rick decides it’s a relief to know.

 

 

 

 

 

_You’re family, too._

                       - Daryl Dixon, This Sorrowful Life, season three.

 

 

“My baby brother never learned to hold a proper grudge,” Merle drawls.  His smile is misdirection, a sickle-blade of mirth.  “Just as well for you, Officer Friendly, because if it were the reverse, if it were Daryl handcuffed on that roof and me in camp, I would have sliced you open from throat to your hairy ball-sac.” 

“Mayhap,” Rick answers.  “But if it were Daryl on the roof, I never would have had to handcuff him in the first place.” 

He watches, his emotions clamped down tight as Merle turns over another mattress, bayonet slicing through feathers and dirty linens. He still doesn’t like the man and nothing’s going to shift Rick’s opinion; like Merle, he knows all about the virtue of a proper grudge, Rick’s held them through entire winters, barely said a word to Lori, he can hold one against Daryl’s brother with the same ease. 

“Still searching for your _high_?”

“Lord knows being a little high was a godsend when I had to saw off my own damn hand, even if it was wearing thin by then.” Merle eyes glitter dangerously, he turns the bayonet, angles it from side to another until the blade catches the light.  “Afterward wasn’t as much fun, crashing cold turkey with a bloody stump for a hand, but we all have our personal vices, don’t we, I’ve seen the way you look at that dark streak of meat. Mmmmm – day-dreaming about her ankles clamped around your neck, flexible as a cat I bet.”  Merle makes a grinding motion, hips stuttering crudely.

He doesn’t want to be here, Rick’s come to realise, Merle doesn’t want to be here any more than Rick wants him here, and the truth is, it’s a bitch for them both.  It’s a whole new state of being uncomfortable. 

The only one desperate to make it work is Daryl.

Rick wants to crack Merle over the back of the skull all over again.  “Grudges?  Yeah, I saw the way you wailed on Daryl in the arena; beating the shit out of him in front of an audience, you tell me, Merle, what was the damn point?  You think you were foolin’ the crowd or somethun’, thought they might lower their guard, what was the grand plan, other than getting those hits in?” Rick rolls his gaze toward him, feels that homicidal rage running up and down his bones, and thinks that fight was a waste of fucking energy.  “Because doing your best to _hurt_ your brother, before the _real_ attack starts kicking in, that reeks of something else to me.”

Nonplussed, Merle shrugs.  “Bro got a few of his own licks in, and we all walked out alive.”

“Because of _me_ ,” Rick snarls.  “Still trying to figure out what your grand plan was.”  He can hear Lori's ghost in the back of his mind - _You and Daryl, that's your big plan?_ \- and Rick thinks _yes_ , it might have been vague to begin with but it was worth it, him and Daryl worked out pretty damn fine.

“He should have killed you,” Merle says, flat, honest, and dropped like a bomb.  “It’s what I would have done.  _It’s what…he…should…have…done.”_

The last is said in a roar, it echoes in the small cellblock.

Daryl never learnt the art of holding grudges, Rick muses silently, his anger was always quick and sharp as a lightning strike - there and gone - but it doesn’t fester or linger, it doesn’t grow into something other, eating people from the inside out.  He came back despite Rick’s ultimatum, he dragged Merle with him, he shores up against Glenn’s justified accusations and tries to find a way to make it _work_.  “He’s not you,” Rick counters, drained and tired, but beyond it all gratified Daryl’s still here, _with him_ , patient in ways Rick has only come to comprehend. Rick feels like he’s clawing away from an abyss, one wobbly step at a time, he's trying to get back to who he was _before_ the prison, before Shane, to find some semblance of himself.  “Thank Christ for that.”

 

_I just want my brother back_

                            - Daryl Dixon, This Sorrowful Life, season three

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Was kind of curious about the walker necklace, or rather how it was returned to Daryl after Rick tore it from his neck in the Chupacabra episode (you can see it in Daryl's camp in later episodes) and the end result was fic, so um, yeah, apologies about that


End file.
